16 weeks

Ok, so i didn't actually have the energy to take the picture on Sunday, but here it is only 2 days late! I'm officially 4 months pregnant!!! (it sound so much more real than saying i'm 3 months pregnant)

Of course maybe horizontal stripes aren't the perfect top for this type of thing, but oh well. At this point i'm definitely showing (although to most people i still just look chunky, but there is a disconnect between the size of my belly and the size of my arms/legs etc.) Luckily i'm still getting to wear scrubs to work everyday so I haven't had to worry about which clothes "fit". Next week I have to start wearing dress clothes everyday for 2 weeks. I feel a meltdown coming on ;) Guess i'll be going to goodwill/target this weekend to see what I can find to be able to wear for 2 weeks.

This weeks stuff: Survived another week on the SICU, now this will be my last week of working 80 hrs for a while. I'm not really craving anything, but I've been trying to focus on making sure i'm getting enough protein. The baby is now the size of an avocado (which Micah was kind enough to pick up on sunday for my picture!) With the exception of feeling "fat" i'm not really feeling pregnant anymore, so while I'm thrilled to feel normal I'm also anxious to start feeling the baby.

I'm sure there is more going on that I should probably write about but at this point i'm too tired to think much more. 16 down, 24 more weeks to go! 

15 Weeks

After a crazy long week in the SICU (80+ hrs of work) I managed to remember (post call!) to take today's 15 week picture. You can tell i'm running on very little sleep and it's not the greatest angle, but... here's my official baby belly! For the first time when i lay flat on my back I can feel my uterus above the rest of my belly. Barely, but definitely there.

On Friday night I tried to go out to eat with Micah wearing a regular pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I not only had to undo the button but i also had to unzip the shorts while I'm sitting. After that incident I decided it was time for me to invest in a pair of maternity shorts. I hated to spend the money (24 bucks!) but i put them on and they were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO comfortable! I'm wearing them in this picture!

We went to our monthly OB appointment this past Thursday. Per the Dr.'s scale I had only gained 4 lbs. (I was stoked but as you can tell from this picture the weight is definitely redistributing itself!) Also, when she put the doppler down to listen the very first thing she said was "It's a boy!" I couldn't help but smile because while she was just goofing around pretending like the old wives tail works, she had no clue about Micah's family history of having boys.

We now have a date for our Anatomy Scan - August 17th! So in less than one month we will find out if we will be welcoming a  little princess or another special Beierle Boy into this world. I'm so excited to find out! can't wait to register for all the baby stuff we'll need. Things are moving so fast. Before I know it I'll actually look pregnant to other people and then I'll be doing residency interviews, an then the baby will be here!

As a 1st time mom I still can't feel any baby movements, although I hear it should start in the next month or so. I can't wait. Keep growing strong little baby, we can't wait to meet you!

Weeks: 15
Baby is the size of a: Navel Orange
Craving: no specific cravings, just happy when i have time to sit down and eat.
Weight gain: 5 lbs
Milestone: Bought maternity shorts

14 Weeks

After an awesome yet exhausting 1st week back to "school" in the Surgical ICU, here is my 14 week belly picture. 

I could definitely benefit from make-up, but my skin still isn't back to normal and i'm fighting a crazy amount of pimples near my chin/jaw line/neck and just lots of bumps all over my face so i'm bypassing the make-up on most days. 

I'm at the point where I love being able to wear scrubs everyday. If finding clothes to wear in the morning was a challenge before, it's darn near impossible now. Scrubs are very comfortable and solve the problem of "what to wear." Everything makes me look fat (since i still don't look pregnant yet, just chunky) Too small for maternity clothes, too chunky for my normal clothes. But the medium scrubs make me feel tiny :) 

On a side note I definitely found my calling. I feel so at home in the surgical ICU and in the trauma bay. I think I will end up specializing in trauma/critical care. Also, I'm getting pretty good at dodging the gazillion x-rays performed in the ICU and trauma bay now that i'm pregnant. 

Ok here is my summary for the week: 

Weeks: 14

Weight gain: still 5-6 lbs.
Special things this week: My 2nd real OB apt. this Thursday. Hopefully we will get to schedule the anatomy scan so I will know when we will get to find out the gender.

Cravings: not really craving much this week, happy just to get time for food during the SICU rotation. Keeping lots of snacks in my white coat pocket and scrounging up the wonderfully healthy food from the hospital cafeteria (sarcasm).

13 weeks

So I figured I would take another picture in the same outfit as my "before" picture so you can actually see what changes are happening. Of course my abs are still pretty strong, so if I try I can still hide my belly  (see above!) but... once i relax my abdominal muscles... well, you can see why I can't wear any of my jeans anymore...

Dun dun dun... The baby bloat is getting big! Proof my uterus really is growing, but sadly nothing that is sticking out is actually uterus. Rather the uterus has displaced my "gut" upwards and out. :/ Oh well, won't be too long before my uterus makes up part of the belly. Right now I can feel it almost 1/2 way to my belly button (but it's just growing up and not really "out" right now.) 

Recap:
Week - 13
Baby's size - Peach
Symptoms, etc. - I never really had bad morning sickness, but what little I did have is starting to dissipate now. I'm officially in the 2nd trimester this week. Still feeling pretty tired, but excited to start the SICU this week. Hello 4th year!
Weight gain - about 6 lbs
Craving - still a little chinese food, and...pretty much everything that's yummy :)

Chemical Lard

After really craving something sweet Micah and I decided to stop at dairy queen so I could try one of the new "chocolate candy" blizzards. About 2 bites in we both comment on how "grainy" the ice cream is. It's like there are these tiny little dots of clear goo throughout the whole thing. If I was smart I would have just stopped eating right then, but no... of course i continued to eat almost the whole thing.

Now it's been nearly 3 hrs later and I still feel like crap. *sigh*

Hopefully this feeling will go away soon and now I know my lesson. Another place to add to my "I cannot go here while pregnant" is dairy queen. Good bye my old friend.

(but on a happier note I hit 13 weeks today!!! 2nd trimester here I come! I'll try to take a picture once i'm feeling a little better.)

12 weeks!

After a grueling 9 hr exam, I decided to treat myself to a day of "shopping" at the San Marcos Outlet malls. Found this shirt (a large, but not quite maternity) on sale and absolutely loved it! Starting to be able to see more "pudge" at my belly. Oh, and Yoga pants are my new love! 

Facts about this week: 

After returning from San Marcos I got sick (a weird type of sick where it seemed as if no food was leaving my stomach and I eventually vomited it back up). My weight which had krept up to a gain of 8 lbs after the trip went back down to an even 5 lbs and then  dropped to 4 after being sick. 

I still Really want Chinese food and I may or may not have eaten at panda express again!  (4th time in about a week) 

I started my Residency application today and everything just seems so surreal. I cannot believe I'm nearing the end of my first trimester and I'm about to embark on one of the most exciting journey's of my career. 

I start 4th year of medical school next monday and will begin with an SICU rotation. I'm thrilled to be back in the surgical field and am looking forward to it so much. (I don't do well with much "free time" at home... i get really bored and my mind won't stop thinking...etc.) 

Micah has been such a wonderful support to me these first 12 weeks and I'm so excited to be going through this with him. Seeing his face when we talk about the baby is priceless. He's going to be such an amazing dad! 

Due Date & first look

Since we weren't actively trying (and I certainly didn't have a normal cycle) we weren't exactly sure how far along I was, so we had a dating ultrasound scheduled. If it had been far enough out it would have also served as a Nuchal translucency test, but since it was too early we decided not to get the nuchal translucency done and just kept this as our dating ultrasound. It was so amazing to see this little thing growing and moving around inside! Luckily (or unluckily?) the U/S tech couldn't see my ovaries transabdominally so she had to do a transvaginal u/s which is why we got such great pictures! I'm thrilled she switched it to the "4-D" view. It's so tiny but you can see arms & legs, even an ear forming! (poor thing, probably going to have my elf ears!) Oh, and just so you know, the circle thing on it's back is the yolk sac (not any spinal problem). 

So the due date: January 13th, 2013! 

I couldn't help but laugh. My 27th Birthday is January 14th. Looks like i'm getting a very special birthday present this year! So this is our little one at 10 weeks & 2 days. 

So since my pants were becoming a little "snug" :) I decided it was time to start posting actual belly pics. Still not much to show other than the extra "pudge" around my middle but I want to capture as much of this pregnancy as I can. 

Facts about this week of pregnancy: 

I take Step 2 CK (a 9 hour exam) Saturday of this week. Due to my "blondeness" or pregnancy brain or whatever I realized on wednesday that I had never actually scheduled the exam. Luckily I found a spot in San Antonio on Saturday so I made a quick trip (you know, just 7 1/2 hrs each way) to visit my sister and take the exam. You can see the ultrasound picture from the week before posted on the whiteboard. It's so cool to actually know there is a real baby growing inside! I have a doppler I can use at home and this is the week that I start hearing it on a regular basis. Love that Thumpity-Thump-Thumpity-Thump. 

Food I'm craving this week: Everything? Panda Express, chinese food in general. Klondike bars. Pumpkin bread... I also think I went to Rudy's this week and picked up 1/2 a lb of brisket and ate the entire thing plus a bit of jalepeno sausage for lunch :0 Yumm. 

Weight gain: about 4 lbs

The "before" picture

I decided to go ahead and take a "before" picture so I could really see the progress of my Baby Bump. This was taken at about 7 wks of pregnancy. (so essentially this is exactly how I looked before I got pregnant).

Surprise!

After finding the love of my life and marrying him this past New Year's Eve, I felt like I was the luckiest girl alive.

All of my dreams were coming true. I was finishing up my 3rd medical school and ready to plan for my future as a general surgery resident with my new Husband. We knew that having biological children might be a challenge for us due to a pituitary tumor my husband had, so I decided to stop my birth control pills for two months just to make sure I could still ovulate (since I had been on the pill for 10 years). We weren't quite ready to start our family just yet so I charted my basal body temp and we used back-up contraception for what I thought was MORE than enough time... 

Fast forward to the day I was supposed to get my period (2 days before I was to resume my birth control pills) and all of a sudden... no period! 

After 5 negative pregnancy tests and nearly 2 more weeks of wondering I had a gut feeling so I took "just one more" and sure enough this was it!!! The line was faint but it was definitely a positive! I quickly jumped in my truck and drove to my husband's work where I surprised him with this picture.

As lucky and blessed as I thought I was, God had decided to grant us the one thing that was missing and that we had worried so much we would never get. We are so excited to start this next chapter in our lives.

Little Baby Beierle, we love you already!